Food fight
Karla Fajardo Castellanos, translated from Rumbo de Mexico in The [Mexico City] News this weekend:
Senators [sic] from the United States, Canada and Mexico all expressed concern Thursday over the non-compliance of many of the promised advantages that have not come to reality from the NAFTA treaty, even 15 years after the signing of the pact.
In a letter to Felipe Calderón, U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and functionaries from the three countries, the Mexican National Association of Rural Producers and Vendors, asked for a serious renegotiation of the NAFTA accord.
…
“Disgracefully, NAFTA has worsened the poverty of the entire continent.
“It is clear that NAFTA is not functioning for a great majority of North American inhabitants…”
The signatories to the letter included two senators — Antonio Mejía Haro and Yeickol Polevnsky — both from the PRD, but the Canadian ( Peter Julian of the New Democratic Party) and U.S. signatory (Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur) are not.
The letter was probably the only tangible evidence of a recent North American Inter-parliamentary meeting, which is only covered (if at all) when someone talks about drugs. Ms. Kaptur — to her credit — has been pushing this issue for a while, as have the others. But it hasn’t amounted to a hill of beans.
From Kaptur’s “Online Office” website this undated entry is probably from early 2008:
In a letter to President Felipe Calderon, Congresswoman Kaptur and [Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), Hilda Solis (D-California) and Linda Sanchez (D-California)] urged the Mexican government “to protect Mexican communities and the livelihoods of thousands of white corn and bean farmers.” The U.S. representatives threw their weight behind a proposal by former Mexican Senator Victor Suarez and family farm organizations in Mexico to regulate the trade of white corn and beans in order to protect internal production and rural employment and stem the migration of displaced farmers.
“We are concerned…for the economic and social wellbeing of the Mexican people,” the four Members wrote in the letter to President Calderon. “(T)he zeroing out of tariffs on white corn and beans is sure to cause further destruction to the most vulnerable sectors of the Mexican economy … We expect more of what we have seen in the earlier phases of NAFTA: more destitution and desperation of campesinos facing very few options, leading to a stronger drug trade and more migration.”
(my emphasis)
It’s easier to focus media attention on the narcotics trade, though it’s seldom covered as a resource and agricultural issue and only as crime and violence. The Amazaonian protests in Peru were going on for quite a long time before the outbreak of violence. There have been small outbreaks here in Mexico, mostly resolved with less bloodshed, but it could happen. There has even been rural uprisings and violence (usually fomented by extremist right wing groups) in the United States during times of agrarian economic collapse.
I doubt a strongly worded letter, or even a series of strongly worded letters — is going to resolve the situation. But if they’re ignored, instead simply focusing on stamping out the one sucessful agriarian export of note there will be more rural unrest and violence than it solves. Once that happens, how easy will it be to dismiss the results as the work of “savages“?
A little work
Having been a child laborer myself and profiting from it (I had the same newspaper route from the time I was 12 until I graduated from high school, mostly because the newspaper chain would give me a scholarship … though having spent my adolescence having to get up 365 days a year at 5:45 AM, I developed a life-long allergy to alarm clocks), I don’t think all child labor is necessarily exploitative.
Probably the happiest child I’ve ever seen was “working” …sort of: a three year old acting as product demonstrator for her dad, as he was selling hand-crafted toys on the Zocalo in Oaxaca. Javier, who had an appliance repair shop in the local on the first floor of the house where I lived for a while in Mexico City often had Javier Junior (who was 10) in after school, and if I go into the corner abarrotes here while the senora is making dinner, sometimes the clerk is the 8 year old (“MAMAAAAA! Donde est…???”) . And, back in the dark ages when internet cafes were first springing up on every corner, an entrepreneural neighbor bought a couple of computers, invested in a Telmex line, put an entry way into her living room through a french window facing the street, and — put the 12 year old to work as on-site guru.
The 12-year old computer geek was probably top of the line when it came to his family job, but it’s not that unusual to see children at the family business (and it may be safer than a day care center). In some situations, like the internet cafe or my neighborhood grocery, it’s simply that the family lives at the shop, and that’s where the kids are.
Not every job though, can be seen as “family quality time” nor as apprenticeship (nor does it lead to a scholarship). The children working as street vendors get the most notice from foreign visitors (and despite the old stories, these aren’t from some “rent a waif” agency, but the beggar or vendor’s own children), about half of underage workers are on farms… and most are working more than 35 hours a week.
Legally, children under 14 are not supposed to be working at all (though whether ringing up the register in the family shop now and again, or learning how to fix a blender like Javier junior should even be considered as child labor is questionable). The 1917 Constitution was, after all, and Mexico’s constitution was the first in the world to include an entire section (Article 123, which is the name of several streets and colonias throughout the country) devoted to working conditions and even spelled out basics of modern child labor law.
Given the primacy of family rights in Mexican law, there is probably not much difference between a 12-year old Mexican waitress serving up meals a few hours after school (often still in her uniform) and a kid in Nebraska expected to help his dad clean out the garage on a Saturday afternoon, walk the dog every morning and do the laundry while mom is at work. Or being expected to milk the family cow and pick the family corn.
But this is not 1917, and the work being done by rural children is not a family outing. These are “jornalaro” — day laborer or migrant worker — families where the parents are already underpaid and overworked. Short of a radical change in the way agriculture is done and food is produced, cheap tomatoes in U.S. supermarkets and strawberries in December in Canada depend in large part on child labor in Mexico.
Today is “International day of child labor” (and, no, there are no Hallmark cards to mark the occasion). Globally, one in twelve children work in dangerous or exploitative jobs: prostitutes, child soldiers, miners, street vendors, beggars… and farm workers.
Coincidence?
Via South Texas Chisme, comes this not so surprising tidbit from the Houston Chronicle:
Not only is Houston a major center for Mexican cartels’ smuggling drugs and weapons, but banks and financial institutions in the nation’s fourth largest city’s also are targets for gangsters trying to hide millions of dollars in profits, according to a White House report released Wednesday.
Underworld organizations, particularly those aligned with the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, have major bases of operation in Houston and Corpus Christi, continues the report, prepared for the Obama administration by the National Drug Intelligence Center.
There are 201 international drug and money-laundering organizations in a 16-county region that stretches from Kenedy County, in deep South Texas, to just this side of the Louisiana border, according to the report.
Houston is (or was) home to Enron, “Sir” Alan Stanford and the Bush family. Why is anyone shocked that there’s funny money floating around, and what’s this about the banks and financial institutions being “targets”… please, who ever heard of Texas businesses turning down money, or any business for that matter?
Smoking zone
Emily Godoy (Tierramerica via Inter Press News) writes:
The latest official data on greenhouse gas emissions, from 2002, indicate that this country released into the atmosphere 643 million tons of carbon dioxide per year: 61 percent from energy generation and consumption, 22 percent from industry and 14 percent from deforestation.
Electricity, which is produced primarily in plants run on fossil fuels, contributes some 114 million tons of carbon emissions annually in Mexico.
Mexico’s share of carbon emissions is about 1.5 of the world total. Carbon credits are only available for 127 million tons, with only about five tons of credits available in all Latin America. Although Mexico is highly dependent on coal and oil, it is well situated to take advantage of solar power (it’s not just sunshine, but high altitude and a dry climate preferably close to the equator that makes for effective solar power collection… and if there’s one thing Mexico is abundant in, it’s high deserts), as well as geothermal, hydroelectric and wind power.
Some start has been made on carbon sequestration (notably, Mexico City gives tax credits for roof-top gardens and plantings) but deforestation is a chronic worry.
I read “The News” today, oh boy…
Being a “blog” and not a news outlet, the Mex Files doesn’t so much report on the news, as comment on it. And, though national in scope, the Mex Files is just one guy living in the cultural boonies … Mazatlan, Sinaloa.
That said, yesterday, the Mex Files received a tip from a “reliable source” that The [Mexico City] News — which changed ownership last week following a staff purge, went through another purge this weekend. According to the source, Malcolm Beith, who’d stayed on as editor either left, or was pushed out, and the remaining staffers from the previous O’Farrill family-controlled News team were also pushed out (or quit, or went on strike).
It’s no secret that The News, under the O’Farill ownership took a pro-PAN editorial position, and I’ve noted that even the reportage was sometimes slanted… mostly in the direction of attacking the PRD-controlled Federal District government. The new owners (Grupo Mac), which I know very little about other than they pubish a chain of not-very-good papers, are said to be overtly pro-PRI… and within PRI, poised to push Enrique Peña Neito (presently Goveror of the State of Mexico) as the PRI presidential candidate in 2012.
The second part of the rumor — if Mex Files was a news publication — would have to be double checked … twice. Not that I don’t think Mexican news organizations slant the news towards one or another political faction (and I also think U.S. papers do, but corporate capitalism is a given for any large business, and we just don’t think about it as bias). But, the rationale — using a newspaper published for, and read by people who are unlikely to be Mexican voters, or even citizens to push a candidate from one party — might be true (Mexican politics is weird), but I’d still want confirmation.
Whether my reliable source is completely accurate or not (and I have no reason to think the source wasn’t), I was bothered when Grupo Mac (after launching the new regime with a slashing editorial attacking the O’Farills — not for their editorial policy, but for their personnel practices) promised immediate changes, but has hasn’t delivered. Instead of building on what was good about the old News, athey reinforced what was bad. The paper is practically nothing but U.S. based wire service reports (even the sports page!) and the editorials that have nothing to do with Mexico… one reason I question whether the paper is a pro-Peña front organization.
There doesn’t seem to much in that Mexican newspaper that’s “Hecho en Mexico”.
The Mex Files tries to fill in some of the gaps, but between trying to self-edit (a near impossibility to do well every day) and wanting to keep to the “mission statement” of the Mex Files, this can’t be a news magazine.
For that, there needs to be a different platform. I hate talking so abstractly, but all I can say is that a news forum involving the Mex Files, but not the Mex Files will mean some changes at the Mex Files.
The first change being a few less posts for the time being, as I’m busy working on whatchamacallit.
Get over it!
That’s basically what Eduardo Medina Mora, Procurador General de la Republica (“Attorney General”) said when Michoacán Governor Leonel Godoy aired complaints that the arrests of Michoacán state officials, in the statehouse was a violation of the law. Media Mora argues that he has the right to make arrests on his own authority, and needed to act before the perps had a chance to carry out their dirty deeds.
That’s about all you’re hearing from the English-language press, and from the conservative press. What some in the press at least find of passing interest is the small detail that the federal police appear to have forgotten to get warrants for those arrests. Ooops!
Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel faces legal action by a Congressional committee over her failure to explain why she is not implimenting the changes in PEMEX contracting procedures that required so much compromise within the Chamber of Deputies and Senate to pass earlier this year. Kessel’s excuse is she’s been travelling, which doesn’t answer anything. Opposition figures assume the real reason is the PEMEX bill wasn’t what the Administration wanted to do, so they’re picking and choosing which parts of the reform package they’ll implement.
The Calderón Administration — besides being conservative and having been elected by a narrow (and somewhat questionable) margin — sometimes acts more like the recent Bush administration not just in pursuing federal prosecutions against alleged “terrorists” which are procedurally dubious, but in deciding for itself how to follow laws passed by Congress.
… But, turnabout is fair play (or not-so-fair). Merry Prankster in Chief (and “Presidente Legitimo”) Andres Manuel López Obrador announced over the weekend that he plans to file criminal complaints against thirty Administration officials for fraud, tax evasion and other jailable offenses. Assuming a judge issues an arrest warrant.
Peru: Yanqui stay home!
Benjamin Dangle was at the Puno, Peru “Indigenous People’s Summit” which ended this week:
At that gathering we heard from representatives, including Alberto Pizango, elected representative of the Peruvian Amazonian peoples, about the ongoing protests they were waging, and the repression faced as a result, from their opposition to some of the plans the Peruvian government has for ‘developing’ the Amazon region and opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation, on the homelands of many Indigenous communities. In response, there have been over 50 days of continuous protest, shutting down parts of the Amazon and the Andes.
The violent confrontation on the fifth of June (the twentieth anniversary of another infamously violent crackdown on citizens by their own government) were NOT — as foreign reports try to make it — either an isolated incident involving purely minor local issues, nor was the state response merely a defensive action.
This morning, the situation took a turn for the worst. The government reacted by sending in police to violently remove the protesters, with different reports claiming as many as 20, 30, or more lives lost in the violent fight that erupted. The protesters had been sleeping at a roadblock maintained over the past few weeks when helicopters arrived and shot at people below, according to witnesses and local journalists. The government has also put out an arrest warrant for Pizango, who spoke today in Lima, for instigating the violence, as if to pretend the intense anger and frustration isn’t coming out of the communities themselves…
The government has recently signed a number of free trade agreements, including with the US and Canada, and has been seeking to change their domestic laws to encourage foreign investment in the Amazonian region, for the benefit of those companies and the central government in Lima. Many of those new laws have been ruled unconstitutional, and have been in violation of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, as well as participation in decision making, rights affirmed by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Dangle is correct in analyzing the root causes (and in seeing justice on the side of the protesters), but there may be (and probably are) local issues involved as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if (as in Oaxaca) competing factions among the protesters use the disturbances to settle scores and compete for support for any number of local caiques.
This uprising is beginning to garner international support, as did the Zapatistas and Oaxaca uprisings here. Foreign involvement has been counterproductive in both those Mexican disputes. Not so much that foreigners will end up dead, a la Brad Will (although the outcry for Will justified the Federal Government’s crackdown on the protesters, effectively “winning” the battle for the very people the “Friend of Brad Will” were opposing), but that foreign persons taking an active role in protests are more easily understood to be foreign interference than are foreign entities like corporations or abstract notions like “foreign business interests.” Foreign activists will be used by opponents to delegitimize the protest movement.
Secondly, as happened with the Zapatistas, foreign support might aid the cause the foreigner supports, but it also aids the other goals of the movement, which may or may not be a moral imperative. I’m not sure to this day why Italian socialists and north American Quakers back a movement in Chiapas that also fostered violence against Jehovahs Witnesses and Protestants, encouraged people to boycott elections (and assured a conservative majority in the federal government) and land invasions into national parks and protected ecological zones. What was good for Chiapas (or, rather, for the Zapatistas) was not necessarily good for Mexico… or Latin America, or the planet.
In short, we need to think globally and act locally. Think of the global consequences of “free trade” and multinational corportions on the world, but work on those issues at home.
Onward Christian Narcos, marching as to war…
Add to suspicion that reactionary Christian fundamentism is tied up with recent terrorist activity in the United States (like the attack on a Lutheran Church service in Wichita Kansas recently) the eye-popping report from Mexican federal intelligence services that at least one narco gang is “inspired” by — and prostelytized for — these U.S. based movements.
There is something almost amusing about La Familia, with its study groups and retreats for meth dealers and hitmen, but that is precisely why the Federal Prosecutor considers La familia the most dangerous of the Mexican gangs… unlike the others, the Michoacan gangsters have an agenda beyond getting rich the old fashioned way … providing goods and services not available in the legal marketplace). They are pushing an alternative view of society and culture.
The weapons in their “culture war” — besides the dreary head-chopping and meth production and smuggling operations — are those of the “traditional values” groups in the United States: specifically literature and propaganda from the Colorada Springs based “Focus on the Family”. As Diego Enrique Osorno reported in Milenio Semenal last December, la Familia draws its inspiration from the works of “Christian” author John Eldredge of the Colorado Springs based organization, Focus on the Family.
Eldredge’s work celebrates and justifies a “manly man” version of Christianity… as Pastor Eldredge writes in his seminal work, “Wild at Heart”:
God designed men to be dangerous. Simply look at the dreams and desires written in the heart of every boy: To be a hero, to be a warrior, to live a life of adventure and risk. Sadly, most men abandon those dreams and desires – aided by a Christianity that feels like nothing more than pressure to be a nice guy. It is no wonder that many men avoid church, and those who go are often passive and bored to death.
Gangsterism certainly has its dangerous side, adventure and risk… and nice guys need not apply. But, it is hard to reconcile criminality with Christianity UNLESS one applies the logic of groups like Focus on the Family, where what’s done in God’s name (and in the defense of “traditional family values”) is morally right.
“La familia does not murder for money, it does not kill women or the innocent. Those who know these people recognize it is divine justice”
was the message left when the group threw five severed heads (kinda gross photo) on the floor of an Urapan disco.
La familia’s value system — eshewing alcohol and narcotics use (but not the manufacture, transportation or sale thereof), traditional marriage and the patriachical family structure — are not unique, but by pushing for these “traditional values”, has given the gangsters some legitimacy beyond the usual apologists for gangsters as jrural investors. It has sponsored workshops on Eldredge’s opus, as well as hired Mexican writers in the same vein (Carlos Cuauthémoc Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Cornejo) to give personal motivation courses in Morelia for the gang-bangers.
I’ve said before that Protestantism, which stresses individual salvation (and being “born again”) has its economic advantages over Roman Catholicism (where the theological discourse is more about civitas dei, and the community of believers) for the personally ambitious. The peculiar United States form of Evangelicalism — especially the fundamentalist sects that reject tolerance of the other, and define “community” only in the very narrow sense of those who follow exactly the line laid down by the clerical leader — is tailor-made for gangsters. And… because this dovetails nicely with the more reactionary clerics within the Roman Church, some Catholic clergymen have also defended la Familia.
Much was made of Santa Muerte, and it’s supposed ties to the Gulf Cartel. That Santa Muerte recongizes criminals as part of the human family does open it to conjectures about ties between believers and gangsters, and led to anti-Muerte activities in some northern communities. I am not the only one who thought the iconclasm had less to do with supposed anti-narcotics activity and more to do with the assumption that Santa Muerte believers are more likely socialists and PRD supporters and the local communities attempting to persecute its believers were PAN strongholds.
Not that Mexican Protestants — even the growing number of them who follow U.S. style Protestantism — are necessarily criminals, or even tolerant of criminality, but that “traditional values” — as presented by Focus on the Family — do not strengthen the community, nor provide for the common good, but quite the opposite. When you think about it, most terrorist organizations are conservative groups — Al Qaida isn’t seeking a post-modernist secular state, any more than the KKK is looking for a post-racial America, or anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue support the rights of women. All demand a state where their own peculiar and threatened values are upheld — and all dissent from those values is put down by violence. Focus on the Family may not actively aid and abet terrorism, but spinning a philosophical justification for holding the line against modernity and tolerance, they give “aid and comfort” to terrorists in the United States and gangsters in Mexico.
July Dogs has a series of four recent posts on la Familia, Focus on the Family and John Eldredge.
Penny pinching Spy v $py
Two Latin American spy stories this past week. A U.S. State Department official was arrested on suspicion that he and his wife had been spying for the Cubans for the last twenty-plus years.
Walter Kendell Meyers (72) and his wife Gwendolyn (71), pled “not guilty” to providing documents to the Cubas. What’s interesting is not that there are Cuban spies, or that the Cubans had no trouble recruiting spies, but that they did it on the cheap. Other than getting a few free spy-type trips (to Mexico, Trinidad, Cuba … and South Dakota!) out of the deal, the the Meyers seem to have operated pretty much on the cheap… I guess when you’re the John Steed and Emma Peele of a country where high-tech transportation is a 1952 Chevrolet with Soviet tractor parts and a Yugo engine, you improvise. The Meyers made do with retro spy-stuff … a short-wave radio and sending messages by Morse Code … or switching off shopping carts with Cuban agents at the local supermarket.
The whole spy-tech stuff cost a heck of a lot less than whatever was spent on the anti-Venezuelan operation that is collapsing in gales of laughter.
Part one of the not-so-secret mission probably didn’t cost all that much. Ads on Craig’s List are free, so the recruiting costs were minimal for
writers that can contribute stories, reports, comedic content, cartoons, and more for our website. Looking for political writers, picture up-loaders, personal experiences, personal views, and anything else that will help shed some light on the situation in Venezuela… Also, if you know any Venezuelan writers, web designers, or anyone else that would like to help out – send them our way!”
That may have been cost-effective, but you wonder about the costs of vetting the recruits (if any). Those who answered the ad didnt always have the mission in mind … or the mission apparently envisioned anyway.
And a Craig’s list ad was only the “final stage” in Operation WTF, which goes back to at least October 2007, when someone — ostensively Clarence A. Steim, the former U.S. Military Attache in Honduras, pissed away $312,500 to register the domain name “fuckhugochavez.com”. Once the site was up (with no Venezuelan writers, as far as I can tell), its laugably amateurish design and sophomoric writing made it a target for unmerciful mockery. Down it came… and some more money was spent changing the ownership records to “private” — as of now, showing ownership by something called “CompanyName.com” Company as in THE Company? Probably not, but at least one writer who looked into the matter thinks there’s something “sketchy” (and costly) going on than just a fool and his money parting ways.
Geeze, maybe the U.S. spies should infiltrate the Cuban government accounting office to figure out how to properly pull off a operation.
I’m too sexy for this ad, too sexy…
This is a new one.
Campaign advertising in Mexico is subject to regulation by the electoral commission (and candidates and parties regularly are sanctioned for various violations… or ignore the sanctions… or demand a change in the regulations after breaking them). Although it broke no election law, advertising for Pachuca municipal council Green Party candidate Erika Ortigoza, may end up in a court case.
Fed up with opponents carping that she looks “too sexy” in her campaign billboards, Ortigoza is thinking of filing a complaint with the State’s Human Rights Commission.
Saturday morning cartoons
Terrorists? Ruh-roo!
John Boonstra (U.N. Dispatch) on a model for fighting terrorists (and narcos) that flies in the face of Dick Cheney and Gitmo (and the Calderon “mano duro” drug “war”), but is grounded in common sense.
Consider the Scooby Doo villains as rudimentary terrorists. They dress up as scary monsters, terrify the local population, and chase Shaggy and Scooby through endless halls and mismatched doorways. That they wear masks, and often are after financial gain, may make them seem to resemble old-school bank robbers, but the crux of their power is the terror they invoke in residents.
The mysteries are inevitably solved by the members of the team — Fred, Daphne, and Velma — who remain relatively calm and treat the monsters as criminals — not, say, “enemy combatants” of the beleaguered town. This is despite the fact that they are impersonating what is, in terms of fear-inducing presence, essentially a child’s equivalent of a bomb-laden terrorist.
But no lockdowns are conducted, there is no torture for information on the monster’s identity, and no pre-emptive strikes.
Doooo!
Rodrigo Contreras Diaz, whose dropped out of business school after two semesters (he was too busy watching cartoons) at learned enough to recognize a loophole in Mexican intellectual property law. And an opportunity. A product that is known to a portion of the public from a foreign registered trademark cannot be registered in Mexico, but nothing is said about registered name that is not a product. Sort of like Like Homer Simpson’s beverage of choice, Duff Beer.
Or, for that matter, the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Roman Catholic Church, under the 1992 treaty between the Vatican and the Mexican Federal Government, has some economic rights within a zone surrounding the Basilica, mostly regarding the regulation of what can, and cannot, be sold — the Church wanted to avoid the situation outside the Metropolitan Cathedral, where Communist literature is sold just outside the main gate. Church lawyers complained about some souvenir vendor’s images of the Virgin (claiming these were not Church-sanctioned images), but — without proof of the Virgin’s actual existence (or, the judge added, as an aside, if She registered a complaint herself) — there was no way to issue an injunction against the vendors.
As Burro Hall discovered, you can buy genuine Duff Beer, even if in his colonia, the bar looks like Death’s waiting room (sort of like Moe’s Bar, only in Spanish)…
Los de abajo
At least in cartoon-landia, the Mexican campesino is saved from injustice.
Amazonia burning
Once again Peruvian society has failed. The death of Peruvian citizens in confrontations that could have been avoided is a symptom of our failure. Moreover, the indifference and even the justification by many commentators and bloggers, who are able to accept these deaths as necessary to maintain order and development means that we are still very far from being a country that can progress.
(“Amazilia Alba” at Peru Apartheid. My translation)
The massacre in Bagua (Amazonas Department), Peru has proven nearly impossible for the Peruvian government to “spin” outside of the country’s small elite.
Despite the tenor of stories (like this one from the BBC) that suggest “tribesmen” attacked military units, it’s pretty clear from both photographers in Bagua and from Peruvian television (both with real, not simulated, graphic violence) show it was the other way around.
IncaKolaNews gives an overview of the very real horror-show, with links to reports from around the country. The number of deaths officially acknowledged as I write this is 31 — 9 police officers and 22 protesters. One Amazonian on-line report (Red Ucayali) claims the death toll is much higher, and police are burning the bodies to hide the evidence of a widespread massacre.
Far from “tribesmen” (and one feels obliged to ask if the BBC would describe rural protesters in Scotland with such patronizing language), the protests by Amazonian residents — organized by the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association — have been on-going for at least a year.
Simon Romero of the New York Times (usually the favorite whipping-boy of everyone who claims the U.S. press is hapless and hopelessly biased when it comes to Latin American coverage) captures what is at the heart of Amazonian protests, and of government repression:
… protests by indigenous groups over plans to open vast tracts of rain forest to oil drilling, logging and hydroelectric dams.
…
The protests are part of an increasingly well-orchestrated campaign by indigenous groups that have been inspired in part by similar movements in Bolivia and Ecuador.
Angered by the government’s failure to involve them in the plans, the indigenous groups in Peru have surprised the authorities with their sudden strength and organization and are now threatening to blunt President Alan García’s efforts to lure foreign investment to the region.
“The president thought we would be docile in accepting plans that could completely change the way we hunt for food and raise crops, and we are not,” said Juan Agustín, 41, a … leader of … an umbrella group here representing more than 300,000 people from dozens of indigenous groups.
Exploitation of natural resources in Amazonia is the key issue in this uprising. There there have been violent clashes between the national government and the local peoples over development issues throughout Latin America. While we have seen uprising like that in Oaxaca (which was complicated by other issues like a union strike, allegations of voter fraud and purely local political issues that foreigners failed to comprehend*) rooted in the same conflict of interests, the Mexican uprisings have not led to the same level of violence.
Although I have noted problems with the Constitutional guarantee of communal rights to indigenous communities, and it’s foolish to pretend that indigenous people are not discriminated against in society at large, for the most part indigenous people are treated the same as other citizens… badly at times. On the other hand, “indigenous” is not automatically lower-class in Mexico, nor does this country have a “Criollo” class (and hasn’t since the 19th century in any real sense). Discrimination usually runs more along social class lines than “racial” ones, though of course the traditional indigenous are the bottom of the rung. The Peruvian protesters in the videos and photographs would not be considered particularly “indigenous”, nor treated as such, outside a bloodline obsessed nation like Peru.
“Local needs v national development needs” protests have usually centered on fair price for development (as in the Atenco protests, set off when the Fox Administration tried to seize an ejido for a new Mexico City airport without fair compensation for land and lost income) or… over conflicting uses of natural resources: water for farms, vs. water for cities. Here in Sinaloa, both compensation and resource use are the issues in protests against a proposed hydroelectric dam project).
At least one of Romero’s sources “blames” the massacre on the usual “outside agitators” in Peru: Ecuadorians and Venezuelans. In a way, that’s true. Foreigners looking at the uprising in Oaxaca, mostly assumed “foreign interests” meant the tourism industry. Both those sympathetic to the protesters, and those vehemently opposed, talked about the effect on hotels and restaurants. They were unwilling to look at where the real opposition was (and where there was real violence) — in the countryside, where foreign developers were the mining and energy sectors. In Ecuador and Venezuela, the governments themselves are largely trying to get control of those foreign developers — and, in both countries, the governments are more responsive to the needs and expectations of these affected citizens.
In Peru, no. Romero quotes the Paul McAuley, a Christian Brothers lay-worker, as saying “Now we have a government resorting to using military force to spearhead development of the Amazon. This cannot be a strategy that is sustainable.” To which, the response from President Garcia (quoted by Inca Kola) is:
“They (Amazon indigenous) are not first class citizens.”
* I’m still a little rankled about the foreign commentators who simplify conflicts like that in Oaxaca to fit their own notions… — often as not a mish-mash of half-baked romantic Marxism and the noble savage myth. I was exiled to “cyber-ia” by one Oaxaca interest group when I pointed out that a regular contributer was claiming (and later claimed in a well-read on-line publication) that she mistook the owner of a security company for a police official, and claims to the contrary, not all anti-government groups in Oaxaca were non-violent. I don’t know enough about Peruvian politics, nor the players involved in this conflict, to pretend that I’m doing anything more than pointing MexFiles readers to Peruvians who either I know, or I have no reason to doubt, are reliable.
mexfiles.net 